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The distributor of the Sarah Palin biopic "The Undefeated" announced Tuesday that it would expand the film's run to more markets after a 10-city opening last weekend.

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Groups were organized via social media to support the opening, with some attendees driving from neighboring states.

The auditorium was packed with Palin enthusiasts who frequently applauded lines the former Alaska governor delivered on screen, giving the screening the feel of a political rally. Further contributing to that atmosphere was that many attendees wore buttons supporting Palin as well as an entrepreneurial moviegoer hawking anti-President Obama T-shirts.

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It is part telling of Palin's career (Acts 1 and 2), and part conservative motivational cinema (Act 3) with "Clockwork Orange"-esque evocative images sprinkled throughout (shark attacks, bodies being buried, warfare both modern and ancient). Sometimes the symbolism is clear, other times it's almost dadaist. There is also an introduction and a portion toward the end composed of clips of crude and hateful jokes by comedians and pundits as well as anti-Palin art, much of it violent or sexist.

"I did not make this film for Palinistas," Bannon insisted to CNN. He said that he believes it can appeal to moderates and liberals, and recast Palin's image for them.

In the first two acts, this could plausibly be the case. But the third act and the coda seem much more heavily weighted with crowd pleasers for a conservative audience. The film has no interviews with Palin or her family, though Palin's voice from her memoir "Going Rogue" is used sparingly.

The featured voices in the last portion of the movie are conservative media superstars, such as Andrew Breitbart and Mark Levin, whose connection to Palin is more tenuous than the first-hand accounts of the voices heard earlier in the film. They are a hit with the audience of the convinced: One viewer told CNN that Breitbart's repeatedly calling the GOP establishment "eunuchs" was the highlight of the film.

The film makes liberal use of symbolic video that is meant to be evocative, such as nature films of lions attacking a zebra meant to illustrate Palin being attacked by enemies in the media. These elements, though often straightforward enough, occasionally drift toward distraction or obfuscation. There is file video of an atomic explosion, which was later explained by the director to symbolize the election of Barack Obama as president.

As an entertaining and motivational piece for a right-of-center audience, the film seemed effective.

Audience members said they were pleased with the film. And while they were already positively disposed toward Palin, many said it had deepened their appreciation of her.

Carolyn Garcia of Kennesaw said, "I think that it was motivational, and I think that it was portraying Sarah in the light that most people don't know." She said that it showed "who Sarah really is, and I wanted to stand up and cheer because she's the type of woman that a lot of us strive to be and what a lot of us want our daughters to be."

Sahar Hekmati picked up on the long portions of the movie comparing Palin to one of her heroes.

"I think she'll be the modern-day Ronald Reagan, that's what I got from it."

Some parents brought their children, like 16-year-old Madeleine Mcaulay, who drove with her mother from North Carolina to see the film. She was already familiar with Palin's life, having read both of her books, but she says the movie still helped her "comprehend the existence of her career in Alaska as mayor and governor and all the attacks she experienced, even at that local level."

Bannon summed up his aim for the film: "The audience is really a middle American audience that knows her only as 'Caribou Barbie.' I think I've driven a stake through the heart of 'Caribou Barbie.' I think if enough people see this, they'll agree with me."

And to critics who say the title of the film is not appropriate for someone who's most famous as a losing political candidate, Bannon says "The Undefeated" is "really about the values she manifests -- frontier values of tenacity, grit and can-do attitude. That's what's undefeated in her."

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it generated so little money despite opening in heavily Republican areas. Seems even Republicans have limits on the swill they'll swallow.

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The prologue and coda of The Undefeated spell out the film’s agenda. It begins with an ugly, fractured montage of Palin’s critics, from, as a title card reminds us, the “corrupt tree [that] bringeth forth evil.” Here are Bill Maher, David Letterman, Madonna, Roseanne, and other godless degenerates using gutter language to describe a woman whom we then see, behind the credits, as a radiant child in a church choir. The coda is more protracted: a hymn to the tea party and the woman who was tea party before there was a tea party, that “natural organic movement of the American people” that’s also an existential threat to the liberal elite.

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I could see a lot of people who loathe Palin come away from The Undefeated grudgingly admitting she must have done some things right in Alaska (a state with a population less than that of Austin, sure, but still). That is, if they can wade through the nonstop imagery of martydom: lions feasting on innocent zebras, a knight felled by one of countless arrows (fired by the leftist media, no doubt), a woman's corpse getting dirt thrown in its face. No shit.

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Finally, just as you're growing weary of being hectored for not having balls, we see Palin's rebirth as champion of the Tea Party (you remember the Tea Party, they're the people who conveniently developed outrage over federal spending after the Republicans lost the election).

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There was almost a whiff of desperation in the publicist's plea with us last night to promote the film online and through social media.

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Two hour commercial about Sarah Palin masquerading as a movie to open in Iowa theaters

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The Undefeated, it appears, is proving an ironic title choice.

The Los Angeles Times reports that John Wilson, the founder of The Razzies, otherwise known as the Golden Raspberry Awards, commented that "She's the political equivalent of what the Razzies are all about.
"And she's hysterically funny if you don't stop and think, "Oh, my God, she could've been vice president!"'

Most reviewers described the movie as an advertisement. Anna Merlan, of the Village Voice, called it 'a glowing two-hour infomercial for Sarah Palin, Presidential Candidate To-Be.'
LA Times writer Robert Abele described the film as 'a troop-rallying campaign infomercial as imagined by Michael Bay: hero-worshipping, crescendo-edited at a dizzying pace, thunderously repetitive and its own worst enemy as a two-hour, talking-points briefing.'

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